"Can you elaborate on the 2am prayer? How does it bring greater union with God? Very interesting."
The 2:00 AM or more commonly, “Midnight Prayers,” constitute middle-of-the-night recitation/chanting of select Psalms, hymns, dedicatory prayers and blessings in eastern Christian jurisdictions such as represented by the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches as well as the Byzantine rite’s faithful Christians sharing union with the Roman Catholic Church.
The pattern of communal variety for Psalm selections and hymns assigned to Midnight Prayers, in particular, fluctuates according to lengthier components designated for typical --so-called ordinary-- weekdays versus the weekly Feast of the Resurrection on the Day of the Lord [Sunday]. These are outlined in major Typica and the Menaion. Additional variations pertain to liturgical season such as the Great Fast [Lent] and major Feasts of Christ and His Holy Mother.
**Midnight Prayers compare with Vigil prayers **in various western monastic traditions such as Benedictines/Cistercians, Camaldolese, Carthusian, and strictly cenobitic enclaves of discalced Carmelites. Reforms in western jurisdictions after the Second Vatican Council such as the Latin rite of the “Roman” Catholic Church, and monastic communities amongst Anglicans and Lutherans worldwide, led to initial blending or amalgamation of Vigil and First Hour/Prime and/or Matins services.
Nevertheless, wherever the Vigil service remains intact and separate, the middle-of-the-night hour for communal prayer in western monasteies often still begins around 3:00 to 4:00 AM to this day. [-- one of numerous Benedictine Rule reform congregations in the Roman Catholic Church as well as Worldwide Anglican Communion-- for current practice of communal Vigil prayers by various monasteries.
How do Midnight Prayers facilitate greater union with God?](
http://trappists.org/our-monasteries)
This question delights me because God has shown fit to give me a wake-up call daily for more than three decades in order to keep the Midnight Prayers, along with modest attention of an ever quieting heart to Midnight Prayers/Vigils. First, it is the very time of night when ancient Jewish and Christian mystics experienced the closest spiritual proximity to the still, quiet voice of God within the heart.
Conversely, the noon or sixth hour of the sun, which appears roughly 180 degrees or diamtetrical from 2:00 AM on a 24-hour clock represents the most distal proximity of prayerful consciousness to the same divine voice by contrast with the time dedicated to Midnight Prayers. Tradition has it right that we encounter greater temptations to despair during prayer, for example, around the time when the midday devil prowls about.
Numerous references to these “natural” thin and thick veils of prayer appear in popular devotional writings of great mystical Saints–East and West–as well as in classical literature such as Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet and the Russian text,
The Pilgrim Continues His Way, concerning the *Prayer of the Heart *or
Jesus Prayer.
The Desert Fathers and Mothers have left us many ways to take advantage of access to God in prayer which middle-of-the-night hours afford us. For example, standing in the orans posture – arms and palms of hands opened widely-- for lengths of time during prayer at night facilitates the advent of repentant tears and instills right respect “fear”] of God in us, such as that this posture and practice under an elder’s guidance deepens our awareness of futile diversions from prayer.
Thanks, I sent you a PM!
. Well, I was having a terrible time with everything. I couldn’t pray, I wasn’t making the Divine Liturgy, I wasn’t reading Scripture, I couldn’t read anything. Then I realized I had given all of Maloney’s books away. Somehow, through the years, he had become my spiritual director. I needed help. I about drove the post office crazy too :clapping: